Pekka Kuusisto’s visits to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra are keenly anticipated, his highly charged musical spark making the bold “New Dimensions” programming vivid and compelling. Works from three living composers were bookended by a rare and early Britten piece and, in a musical arc reaching back through the centuries, a lively Haydn symphony. A fluid partnership between Kuusisto and pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips had interchanging conducting duties, Kuusisto jumping in as soloist or leader, always bursting with infectious energy and enthusiasm.
Britten’s Young Apollo was written in 1939 when he and Peter Pears were staying in a cabin in Quebec. Commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, it is a “fanfare for piano, string quartet and string orchestra” taking Keats’ poem Hyperion as his inspiration. Crawford-Phillips crafted driving piano passages while the strings shimmered in A major, Kuusisto’s violin blending with the players and emerging as soloist, the radiant music saluting the new Olympic god of the sun in his “quivering beauty”. It was a mesmerising performance, Crawford-Philips’ driving arpeggios and glissandi contrasted with more reflective moments, unison strings with robust downbows providing textural variation. Britten withdrew the work after its New York premiere, but his fascination with male beauty in A major stayed right through to Death in Venice.
Thomas Adès wrote Märchentänze for violin and piano, expanding it to an orchestral version for its premiere in Helsinki in 2021 with Kuusisto as soloist. In four sections, the work takes English folk themes and ingeniously twists and turns them in a delicious discord beginning with a high energy wonky dance from the soloist as intriguing orchestral textures are explored. A retrospective mellow passage with a haunting solo clarinet taking over from the violin with shifting harmonies was as beautiful as a country lane in spring. The only part with a title, A Skylark for Jane, had conductor Crawford-Phillips guiding the players in swooping and swirling freeform, his fingers counting irregularly from 1 to 10 marking fixed points in the music. A final blistering fiddle performance from Kuusisto clashed with vivid looping orchestral interruptions in rhythms so complicated that you wanted to tap your feet, but couldn’t.
American Timo Andres wrote his three movement Piano Concerto “The Blind Banister” to be programmed alongside Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto from which is does not quote but takes inspiration from a cadenza. Crawford-Phillips brought a sensitive fluttering touch in the absorbing descending decorated piano scales, strings softly building atmosphere. It’s post-minimalistic, but the variations in orchestral groupings, with a busy percussion section (including a wooden plank and double bowed xylophone) with colourful woodwinds sparked a keen interest, Kuusisto now on the podium as the players piled on layers, the music becoming more boisterous. The piano’s dreamy jazz descending sequences turned into heavy raindrops as the piece ended in a flurry, Andres in the hall to take his bow.
Sally Beamish’s opera Monster based on Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, was premiered by Scottish Opera in 2002. Her earlier piece Whitescape was her sketch-pad of ideas which form interludes in the full work. The music describes desolate icy landscapes and abandonment, chilling percussion and overblown flutes adding threatening menace. Sombre oboe and other-worldly chimes contrasted with an innocent glockenspiel theme, and there were a few gentle breezes, but the ending had percussionist Louise Lewis Goodwin diving under the keyboard of an upright piano to thunder the strings as the ice returned.
Haydn’s sunny Symphony no. 88 in G major banished the cold, Kuusisto directing from the violin to end the concert in a brilliantly focussed, crisp performance full of lively dynamics, harking back to Britten’s youthful joyfulness.
